The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

PRAISE FOR

THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED

I can’t believe I’m saying this: It’s worse than I even imagined.

—Stephen Colbert

As much as you think you know about the arrogance, vanity, and sheer incompetence of Trump’s years in the White House, Bolton’s account will still astonish you.… No wonder the White House was so determined to block this book.

—David Ignatius, Washington Post

A scathing and revelatory account… indispensable, jaw-dropping, and specific… what a truth he offers us.

—The New Yorker

Bolton’s bombshell book shows it’s still possible to be shocked by Trump’s presidency.

—The Guardian

Mr. Bolton’s volume is the first tell-all memoir by such a high-ranking official who participated in major foreign policy events and has a lifetime of conservative credentials. It is a withering portrait of a president ignorant of even basic facts about the world, susceptible to transparent flattery by authoritarian leaders manipulating him and prone to false statements, foul-mouthed eruptions and snap decisions that aides try to manage or reverse.

—The New York Times

The most substantive, critical dissection of the president from an administration insider… lays out a long series of jarring and troubling encounters between the president, his top advisers, and foreign leaders.

—Washington Post

A book full of damning details.

—The Economist

Explosive.

—Business Insider

Devastating portrait.

—Telegraph

Eye-popping.

—CNN

Jarring.

—Jake Tapper, CNN

Shows the scale and depth of Trump’s depravity and corruption.

—The Atlantic

A service to the nation… There is no question that this book contains explosive revelations that could well have an impact on the election.

—Thomas Wright, The Brookings Institute, The Atlantic

The details are damning.

—Fareed Zakaria

The most devastating indictment yet.

—Nicolle Wallace

A harrowing portrait.

—Mother Jones

Absurdly entertaining.

—Ben Domenech, The Federalist

A riveting read.

—Trevor Noah, The Daily Show

The most important White House memoir yet to emerge from the Trump administration.

—National Review

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

For Gretchen and Jennifer Sarah

Hard pounding, this, gentlemen. Let’s see who will pound the longest.

—THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON,

RALLYING HIS TROOPS AT WATERLOO, 1815

FOREWORD

THE ROOM WHERE IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN

These fragments I have shored against my ruins.

—T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Donald Trump may well be reelected President this November, becoming only the second person to win non-consecutive terms. He may win despite his responsibility for January 6, 2021, one of America’s worst days; strong opponents for the Republican nomination; four criminal indictments; his illusory financial success shredded in civil cases; and rejection by many of his close advisors. His critics have made their case by assaulting his character, by providing psychiatric diagnoses for his behavior, by deploying trenchant ridicule and shrill forecasts of constitutional government’s imminent demise. Nothing has stopped him yet.

History, however, is not made by impersonal forces, but by individuals. Nothing in politics is inevitable, and facts, even now, can shape politics. Facts are blunt instruments, and a mountain of facts demonstrates that Trump is unfit to be President. In particular, he has no political philosophy, and does not have policies as conventionally understood. Searching for policy coherence is fruitless, since he cares almost exclusively about his own interests, and refuses to take responsibility for decisions he makes that go awry. Persuading voters to select other candidates is not my principal purpose here, but to relate facts about Trump as I saw them, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. Opinion and rhetoric come and go, but hard facts abide.

Trump’s first presidential term very likely predicts his second. Those who say he began acting differently after the 2020 election are wrong. There is no evidence he has changed since this book’s last scenes. The best way to deny him four more years is to remind voters of what he did in his first, and the implications. So let’s conjure a second Trump term.

The Retribution Presidency

Trump argues incessantly that while his opponents and the never-defined deep state are relentlessly persecuting him, their real targets are his supporters. Following one indictment, for example, Trump said, in the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you—and I’m just standing in their way,¹

Supporters cheered. Characteristically, Trump went further, saying, In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.²

Trump really cares only about retribution for himself, and it will consume much of a second term.

He has already identified targets, accusing former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, whom he appointed, of treason, all but demanding Milley’s execution.³

Trump was provoked because Milley called his Chinese counterpart after the 2020 election to ensure that Beijing did not misperceive our political contentiousness for either strategic weakness or strategic threat. Defense Secretary Mark Esper authorized the call (following his own similar message to China), which, like similar military-to-military contacts in tense times, can prevent problems before they arise.⁴

Trump, who didn’t understand government before his inauguration and learned precious little thereafter, only saw Milley receiving good media coverage at his expense. That, in Trump world, where everything is about him, constitutes treason. His remarks about Milley alone demonstrate Trump’s unfitness for the presidency.

Trump then attacked NBC, saying it should be investigated for Country Threatening Treason, for criticizing him,⁵

again conflating himself and country, and ignoring First Amendment constraints preventing government from silencing political critics. Trump often aimed the treason gun during his presidency,⁶

demanding, for example, prosecution of former Secretary of State John Kerry for violating the Logan Act, and seemingly acquiescing to the mob’s demands to hang Mike Pence for not doing Trump’s bidding on January 6.⁷

Trump in his retribution mode has also called me a traitor.⁸

Like many other officials, I submitted this book to an extensive prepublication review. The manuscript was cleared after a four-month line-by-line review, but not before Trump sought to enjoin the book from being published or distributed.

The way he used the government to do so is a small window into how he will corrupt it as President. Prepublication reviews normally do not involve other White House officials. In the case of this book, however, the review entailed an unprecedented amount of interaction between the political appointees in the NSC Legal staff and the career prepublication review staff, according to Kenneth Wainstein,⁹

who represented Ellen Knight, the National Security Council Senior Director (a career civil servant) who led the review. When Knight finished, clearing the book for publication, Trump objected, because it might harm him politically. He ordered a de novo review by a noncareer, Trump-appointed attorney who had never done a prepublication clearance.

Typically, Trump told his staff and national television news anchors exactly what he was doing: We’re going to try and block the publication of the book. . . . After I leave office, he can do this. But not in the White House.¹⁰

Of course, if any material in the published book was classified, it would have been the day after the election as well as before. Trump’s own words prove unarguably that politics motivated him and his subordinates.

Despite the book’s having been cleared, and for entirely political reasons, unrelated to classification issues, Trump directed Justice to stop its distribution before the June 23, 2020, publication date (although by then booksellers already had the book), and to recoup any proceeds I might receive.¹¹

Trump later ordered that subpoenas be sent to both Simon & Schuster and my literary agents. (Tellingly, Justice attorneys handling the subpoenas seemed apologetic. I suspected that the Justice lawyers wanted to do as little as possible to advance a frivolous investigation.)

The district court properly rejected Trump’s effort at prior restraint but, because of false and misleading materials submitted by Justice and the White House Counsel’s office, allowed the case to proceed on the recoupment claim. As part of that effort, Knight was subjected to a Star Chamber process to adhere to the party line—that I had been acting in bad faith and had not adhered to the process. Knight replied that I had seemingly conducted himself in good faith overall and that she had never seen any indication that I was trying to circumvent the process. He had been gruff and demanding and expressed frustration at times during the process, but [Ms. Knight] always felt his intention was to cooperate with and complete the review.¹²

Gruff and demanding? I can’t imagine it. Frustrated? You bet.

White House lawyers then tried to force Knight to sign a declaration she knew was untrue in many respects. As Wainstein recounts, over the course of five days and a total of 18 hours of meetings, a rotating cast of Justice Department and White House attorneys tried to persuade Ms. Knight to sign a declaration¹³

she knew to be contrary to reality, something also very Trumpian. Knight was alone, facing between three and six Justice and White House lawyers. When she asked for a senior National Archives official to be present, her request was denied. Ironically, this may have been Trump’s first contact with the National Archives, although indirectly.

Think of it: alone in West Wing conference rooms for eighteen hours over five days. Maybe they forgot the rubber hoses. Trump’s lawyers never informed the court they didn’t get what they wanted, or any other inconvenient details. They disregarded critical facts and legal principles, violating their own integrity, purely to satisfy Trump. At one point, Knight confronted the government lawyers, insightfully characterizing the proceedings:

[She] asked the attorneys how it could be appropriate that a designedly apolitical process had been commandeered by political appointees for a seemingly political purpose. She asked them to explain why they were so insistent on pursuing litigation rather than resolving the potential national security issues through engagement with Ambassador Bolton and her team. The attorneys had no answer for her challenges, aside from a rote recitation of the government’s legal position that Ambassador Bolton had violated his contractual obligations by failing to wait for written clearance. However, when Ms. Knight speculated that this litigation was happening because the most powerful man in the world said that it needed to happen, several registered their agreement with that diagnosis of the situation.¹⁴

Justice’s Civil Division, which I headed during the Reagan administration, filed the case against me on June 16, 2020. Jody Hunt, then Civil’s Assistant Attorney General, resigned contemporaneously with the filing.

None of the culpable White House or Justice lawyers have been held to account. Knight was subsequently fired from her Senior Director position for giving Trump an answer he didn’t want. Fortunately, through the combined efforts of several former National Security Advisors, Democrat and Republican, the Biden administration returned her to her old job.

After Trump left office, using the risk of extensive discovery of both White House and Justice malfeasance, my friend and trusted lawyer Chuck Cooper obtained dismissal of Trump’s civil case with prejudice. As part of the settlement, the desultory, inactive criminal gambit was also dropped.

How much of Trump’s retribution rhetoric will translate into action remains unknown, but my experience and many others should serve as a warning. After all, as Trump says: IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU.¹⁵

Continuing Constitutional Crisis

If returned to office, Trump will need others to carry out his directives. He will want White House staffers to follow his orders without asking troubling questions, as testimony in the classified-documents case¹⁶

demonstrates. These staffers will not be known for independent, creative thinking, just personal fidelity to Trump, for whom loyalty flows only one way.

No responsible President would want such a staff; he or she would instead seek advisors who voiced their opinions straightforwardly, not hesitating to bring bad news when necessary. Presidents face tough issues requiring tactical decisions where even philosophically like-minded advisors will disagree. So selecting a strong, competent White House staff has nothing to do with restraining a President or undercutting his Constitutional authority. It is simply good management. Everyone knows Presidents make the final decision, but a White House of serfs will serve neither Presidents nor America well. Indeed, being surrounded by neutered aides fearful of firing could again cause Trump’s downfall, at potentially terrible cost to the country.

The President’s free hand in staffing the West Wing contrasts with appointments for the vast majority of senior officers of the United States who manage the broader Federal government, where the Senate’s advise-and-consent power limits his discretion. The Senate’s future makeup is unknown, but Democrats will certainly try to block key Executive Branch nominees. Moreover, many Republicans will examine Trump nominees to ensure both their capabilities and their loyalty to the Constitution, and not to the temporary Oval Office occupant.

Trump and many supporters see a deep state, a careerist cabal in law enforcement, intelligence, foreign-policy, and the military, covertly running the government and conspiring to destroy him and his regime. The deep state is a fallacy, but there is no doubt that government bureaucracies develop distinctive cultures. What Trump and his acolytes don’t understand is that this culture arises not from clandestine conspiracies but from legislative mandates and incentive structures that federal agencies live within. It is often not a pretty picture. I have, for example, long argued that the State Department needs a cultural revolution to redirect its efforts, one that will take decades to bring about.¹⁷

But directing recalcitrant bureaucracies, however difficult and frustrating, is a required skill for any President who truly wants to accomplish significant change and not merely bloviate about it.

Since Trump does not understand this logic, he will inevitably and repeatedly cross lines that will cause conflict, often constitutional conflict. Take the four pending criminal indictments against Trump. He will have constitutional authority to order Justice to dismiss the two cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, or, if necessary, pardon himself. Trump has already argued for a government shutdown to stop Smith’s trial preparations and investigations.¹⁸

While the President’s authority to self-pardon is disputed, litigating a Trump self-pardon could take years before definite resolution, even assuming someone has standing to litigate the issue. And if the Supreme Court invalidated Trump’s self-pardoning, it might take yet another impeachment saga to remove him from office. He will not depart voluntarily this time.

The result could well be mass resignations from Smith’s office, and perhaps across Justice. This time, there will be little prospect, as during the Saturday Night Massacre, of halting a tide of resignations. When Richard Nixon ordered the firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, Attorney General Elliott Richardson and his Deputy, William Ruckelshaus, resigned because of commitments that they made during their confirmations. Nixon then ordered the Department’s third-ranking official, Solicitor General Robert Bork, to fire Cox, and Bork said he would also resign. But Richardson talked him out of it, arguing that Bork alone could prevent a flood of resignations from lower-ranking Justice lawyers. Richardson told him, You’ve got the gun now, Bob. It’s your duty to pull the trigger.¹⁹

Bork did so, maintaining the Department’s basic function and integrity were vital. Every time Trump seeks retribution through Justice, as he has on multiple occasions, the risk of protest resignations arises, impairing the effective operation of the entire Federal legal system. In such circumstances, who would serve in a Trump Justice Department? The same question applies across the Federal bureaucracy.

The New York and Georgia indictments are more complicated. Trump has no authority to direct them, nor can he pardon himself, because they are not Federal cases. What would he do if convicted and sentenced? Quite possibly, he would simply reject such outcomes (particularly if they involved jail time), arguing, typically, that they were witch hunts, and refusing to accept the validity of the legal results. What then? How do State or local officials deal with an incumbent President contesting their jurisdiction and authority? And who at the national level would assist them? Yet again, impeachment may be the only remedy.

Because of that possibility, Congress will be in constant agitation during a second Trump incumbency: constant combat with Trump over his legitimacy in office will distract America from pending threats, especially internationally, where his attention span is already perilously short.

Beyond Justice, the entire deep state will face comparable tribulations. Trump’s prior clashes with national-security bureaucracies are well known. Who will be willing to serve there as political appointees, and who among them could expect easy Senate confirmation? Trump is completely comfortable with extraordinary personnel turnover, partly because he has no idea what is required to steer the massive Federal bureaucracy, and partly because high turnover means he alone remains the center of attention. Trump is not focused on reducing the Federal Government’s size and scope so much as on achieving objectives personal to him, particularly retribution. In consequence, vast portions of the national-security machinery may simply grind to a halt in a second Trump term. We are entirely in uncharted territory.

Dropping the Conservative Pretense

There is no Trumpism. His lack of philosophy and inability to reason in policy terms leaves him uniquely susceptible to dramatic shifts in his positions, and certainly in his rhetoric. If his self-interested cost-benefit analysis of something changes, his policy view changes accordingly, and quickly. This is a major contributing factor to Trump’s endemic untrustworthiness and unfitness for the presidency.

Examples of his deviations from conservative norms already abound, as in 2016 when Trump said, I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,²⁰

This is hardly a law-and-order position. Nor is his solicitude for January 6 rioters, including hosting a fundraiser at his Bedminster resort and pledging to contribute to their legal-defense fund. There have been few people that have been treated in the history of our country like these defendants, he said, incorrectly.²¹

Had they really been Antifa members, he would have favored maximum sentences. The consistent conservative view is straightforward: Whatever the politics of those who invade the Capitol to disrupt Congress’s orderly functioning, they should serve maximum prison terms without parole.

Trump’s ineligibility for a third term (which could be changed only by constitutional amendment) inhibits him in some respects. But in other ways, it also frees him from political constraints. In my experience, when substantive policy arguments made no headway, Trump was often persuaded by arguments based on personal political benefit. Because he need not fear the challenges of another presidential election, the political constraints around him are much looser, and the real guardrail of voter opinion will be minimized. Moreover, he will be hearing endlessly about his legacy, a message with an uncanny ability to turn the heads of public officials away from philosophical and policy goals toward their own self-enhancement. How far astray he will go is unknowable, but his record indicates that conservatives supporting Trump because they believe he is one of them could be quite surprised after four more years.

Consider abortion. Trump takes full credit for overturning Roe v. Wade because of his three Supreme Court appointments, a result he pledged to deliver during his 2016 campaign.²²

Evangelical Christians strongly supported him then and again in 2020. But why did they choose someone so far removed personally from their religious morality? Trump’s judicial nominations were no different from what all recent GOP presidential aspirants promised: highly qualified originalists. Inexplicably, even today, 53 percent of Republican voters see Trump as a person of faith, a figure higher than for Mike Pence or Mitt Romney.²³

Evangelicals and other abortion foes may well stick with Trump, but he may not stick with them. In September, 2023, he called abortion bans at pregnancy’s sixth week a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.²⁴

He seemed to be pivoting toward the general election, sensing he already had the nomination locked up. And on judges, one can easily imagine someone (perhaps a Manhattan-raised family member) telling him he did a great job appointing conservative jurists in his first term, and now, for his legacy, he should pursue balance in the Federal judiciary. This is what all voters, especially conservatives, should grasp: for Trump, neither abortion nor judicial appointments are matters of principle. What he wants is the best political posture for Trump, even if that means betraying some supporters to pick up others. Once elected and freed from worrying about another election, only his legacy will matter. No one can predict where that will take Trump on abortion or anything else.

On meat-and-potatoes economic questions, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his unorthodoxy. While he supports tax cuts and reduced government regulations (again, like every conceivable Republican presidential nominee), he finds fiscal discipline a foreign concept. After all, he is playing entirely with other people’s money. In his first term, Trump was fascinated by infrastructure projects, typically high-dollar proposals, to garner favorable publicity for the politician who announces them. Roads, bridges, ports, airports—the list is endless.

In June, 2020, locked in a tight reelection contest, Trump proposed an eye-catching one trillion–dollar infrastructure initiative.²⁵

The year before, Trump and Democratic congressional leaders had agreed on a two trillion–dollar infrastructure package.²⁶

The year before that, he announced cooperative projects with State and local governments and the private sector to spend $1.5 trillion on infrastructure.²⁷

Trump-era spending during COVID was indistinguishable from Biden’s for its lack of fiscal rigor. Both Presidents were throwing money at the problem. Had Trump been reelected, there is no sign that he would have been more circumspect. After all, it wasn’t his money. And, just as Trump increased the money supply with fiscal stimulus and scant efforts to balance the budget, so too did he encourage expansionist monetary policy. Perhaps because of his real-estate background, Trump is addicted to low interest rates. He rarely missed an opportunity to criticize Jay Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, for even small increases in interest rates or reductions in the Fed’s balance sheet, bloated since the 2008 financial crisis. Being a chronic debtor himself, Trump is not averse to having his outstanding loan balances effectively reduced by inflation, from which he also benefits by increased real-estate valuations, something he apparently has trouble doing accurately. In any case, neither his fiscal nor monetary policy instincts are recognizably conservative.

Finally, on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the entitlement programs swallowing the rest of the Federal budget, Trump has been completely clear: he will not cut them and he will not reform them. He criticizes Republican primary opponents in his typically subtle fashion, for example calling Florida Governor Ron DeSantis a wheelchair-over-the-cliff kind of guy for supporting Medicare reforms.²⁸

Controlling entitlement spending is obviously a contentious issue, but not one Republicans should shy away from. For Trump, however, the question is quite simple. He is not going anywhere near the third rail of American politics.

This recitation of current and potential Trump heterodoxy could continue endlessly. It reflects the reality that Trump is unburdened by philosophy or policy consistency. It is unclear why his Republican opponents have not more successfully used these and other examples to erode Trump’s support with his base. Whether his Democratic opponent this fall will have greater success remains to be seen.

The Isolationist Virus

In no arena of American affairs has the Trump aberration been more destructive than in national security. His short attention span (except on matters of personal advantage) renders coherent foreign policy almost unattainable. The United States missed an incalculable number of opportunities in Trump’s first term because senior officials necessarily concentrated on keeping a few key policies on track. Trump’s variability was the only constant. Nothing in his post-presidency indicates any prospect of more orderly decision-making ahead.

I believed before becoming National Security Advisor that the gravity of Trump’s international policy responsibilities would discipline even him, as it had his forty-four predecessors. I was obviously wrong, as this book attempts to show. Trump’s only consistent focus is himself and what benefits him. His unwitting adherence to Louis XIV’s doctrine l’état, c’est moi meant he invariably treated good personal relations with foreign leaders as good relations between their countries. Good personal relations are important, but the idea that they sway Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and their ilk is dangerously wrong.

Trump’s most harmful national-security failure is the isolationist virus now coursing through the Republican Party. There is not enough space here to enumerate the errors of this impulse, but I have begun doing so elsewhere.²⁹

Its consequences for our future are enormously troubling. The Democratic Party long ago dismantled its national security wing, embracing instead a form of isolationism melded incoherently with indiscriminate multilateralism. This leftist variant rests on distrust by Americans of America’s own power; discomfort with our history; a moral equivalence that draws no distinctions among nation-states; and sheer weakness. The anti-Israel progressive position in response to Hamas’s savage October 7 attack shows how far their party has departed from reality. There is no Dean Acheson, no Scoop Jackson, no Joe Lieberman at senior Democratic Party levels. Accordingly, if isolationism spreads widely among Republicans—the almost assured outcome if Trump is reelected—America is in deep trouble.

As of this writing, the gravest crisis, evident in Congressional debate, is U.S. assistance to Ukraine to resist Russia’s unprovoked invasion. (This priority could change, depending on how Iran and its terrorist surrogates respond to Israel’s effort to dismantle Hamas.) Barack Obama’s limp-wristed response to Moscow’s 2014 aggression contributed substantially to Putin’s 2022 attack. Trump’s first encounter with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, the perfect phone call and its aftermath, was also a factor. Ukraine was corrupt, said Trump, it colluded with Democrats against him in 2016, was doing so again for 2020, and he wanted answers. Of course, no answers were forthcoming, since none existed. Thereafter, for Ukraine, it was all downhill. Biden has aided Ukraine, but in a piecemeal, nonstrategic way, constantly deterred by unwarranted fears of Russian escalation.

Trump did not cause all this disarray, but it would never have reached its current level without him. Unfortunately, there is the even greater danger that Trump, in office, will implement his desire to withdraw America from NATO. He came precariously close to doing so in 2018, and his subsequent criticism has been unrelenting. NATO’s merits need not be reargued here, except to stress that NATO’s civilizational foundations³⁰

mean essentially nothing in Trump’s transactional world, where the motto is, What have you done for me lately? The Supreme Court has never ruled authoritatively on a President’s unilateral authority to withdraw from Senate-ratified treaties, but Presidents have regularly done so. I have myself contributed to recent U.S. withdrawals from three harmful treaties: the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty; and the 1992 Open Skies Treaty, all unilaterally announced by Presidents without congressional involvement. Legislative efforts to stop Trump³¹

will likely fail, and if enacted are probably invalid. If contested in court, a definitive Supreme Court ruling could take years, and perhaps precipitate constitutional crises along the way.

Vladimir Putin would be pleased if Trump withdrew from NATO. Trump is pleased by Putin’s flattery. When Putin welcomed Trump’s talk of ending the Ukraine war, Trump gushed, I like that he said that. Because that means what I’m saying is right.³²

Earlier, Trump wanted the G-7 to bring Russia (expelled following its 2014 assault on Ukraine) back into membership, and the record is full of examples of Trump’s fascination with Putin. It is almost inevitable that a second-term Trump policy on Ukraine will favor Moscow. His repeated assertions he was tougher on Russia than prior Presidents are inaccurate. His Administration did impose major sanctions on Russia, against Kremlin efforts to interfere in U.S. elections, sell S-400 air-defense systems, and other anti-Western ploys. These penalties, however, were urged by Trump’s advisors, and carried out only after he protested vigorously against them. His assertions that Putin would never have invaded Ukraine had he been reelected are wishful thinking. Putin knows his mark. He will relish a second Trump term.

Trump is unlikely to thwart the rapidly tightening Beijing-Moscow axis, this century’s most evident threat to America. Indeed, it is a close contest between Putin and Xi Jinping, who would be happiest to see Trump back in office. While Trump drew attention to China’s growing threat, he never understood that decades-long American policy failures rested on widely shared, deeply flawed assumptions about China. When Deng Xiaoping made major economic reforms in the mid-1980’s, his little-noticed corollary doctrine hide your capabilities, bide your time provided Beijing excellent camouflage for decades, until the full China threat began to emerge.

Trump’s limited conceptual reach led to simple-minded formulations (trade surpluses good, trade deficits bad), but did allow others to emphasize greater Chinese misdeeds. They include massive theft of Western intellectual property; mercantilist trade policies protecting China’s domestic markets while they aggressively penetrate foreign markets; the manipulation of the supposedly free-trade World Trade Organization; and debt diplomacy, which ensnared unwary countries in unsustainable financial commitments that Beijing could later exploit. These are all real threats to America and its like-minded partners, but whether Trump is capable of countering them is highly doubtful. Ultimately, both Beijing’s obduracy and Trump’s impulse for personal publicity precluded whatever slim chances existed to eliminate China’s economic abuses diplomatically. In a second term, Trump will continue seeking the biggest trade deal in history, or the deal of the century (his phrases) with China with scant regard for substance. He will no longer need increased grain sales to help attract farm-state votes for reelection, but he will want to enhance his personal relationship with Xi.

In fact, on trade matters generally, Trump’s instincts contravene conservative free-trade principles. He has proposed 10 percent tariffs on all imports,³³

despite significantly increasing balance-of-payments deficits by so doing in his first term, just the opposite of his desired results.³⁴

Moreover, Trump’s myopic understanding of trade issues, and the trade fights he picked with Japan, Europe and others impaired our ability to increase pressure against China’s broader transgressions against us all.

Meanwhile, Taiwan and others along China’s Indo-Pacific periphery face real peril in a second Trump term. He still shows no recognition of Taiwan’s importance, as he earlier ignored Beijing’s crushing of Hong Kong’s autonomy. The near-term risks of China’s manufacturing a crisis over Taiwan will rise dramatically. It is unlikely Beijing will physically invade Taiwan, since crossing the Taiwan Strait’s hundred miles of open ocean is a formidable task. More likely, China’s navy will blockade the island, and perhaps seize Taiwanese islands near the mainland, just to show that it can. Xi Jinping is watching Ukraine closely. If Biden fails to assist Ukraine adequately, it could presage our unwillingness to contest China’s blockading of Taiwan. Trump may believe the One China policy means we can accept Beijing’s absorbing of Taiwan, but our Indo-Pacific allies would be justifiably appalled. The loss of Taiwan’s independence, which would soon follow a U.S. failure to resist Beijing’s blockade, could persuade most countries near China to follow a Finlandization policy at best, seeking neutrality if they see alliance or even friendship with America as too risky.

Taiwan’s fall would encourage China to finalize its asserted annexation of almost all the South China Sea, advanced so successfully during the passive Obama years. Littoral states such as Vietnam and the Philippines would cease further resistance. Commerce to Japan and South Korea, especially of Middle Eastern oil, would be subjected to Chinese control, and Beijing would have close to unfettered access to the Indian Ocean, thereby endangering India by sea as well as by land along their contested northern border.

Imagine Trump’s euphoria at resuming contact with North Korea’s Kim Jung-un, about whom he famously boasted, We fell in love.³⁵

Trump previously almost gave away the store to Pyongyang, and he could try again early in a second term. A reckless deal on the North’s nuclear-weapons program would further alienate Japan and South Korea, and extend China’s influence. Pyongyang’s emerging role in the Beijing-Moscow axis, including providing ammunition and weapons for Russia to use against Ukraine, will not deter Trump from getting back together with Kim.

Israel’s security might seem an issue on which Trump’s first-term decisions and rhetoric should comfort even his opponents, especially after the October 7 barbarity. But it is likely to be cold comfort indeed. Trump didn’t like Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu nearly as much as publicly appeared, and his comments since leaving office have been uninhibited,³⁶

even after the brutal Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023.³⁷

More substantively, there is no foreign-policy area where the absence of electoral constraints could liberate Trump as much as in the Middle East. Even constant, devastating terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas³⁸

and Hezbollah, both armed and financed by Iran, may not produce the same reaction from Trump as before. Moreover, since Trump almost succumbed to Emmanuel Macron’s pleading to meet Iran’s Foreign Minister in August, 2019, a newly inaugurated Trump could seek a deal with Iran. Even as he withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, he said he wanted a broader, better deal, blind to the reality that so doing would only mean broader Iranian violations, and the renewal of Tehran’s support for terrorism, particularly directed against Israel and America.

Since Trump negotiated his catastrophic withdrawal deal with Taliban, worsened by Biden’s bungled handling of U.S. withdrawal, nothing suggests that he yet understands, let alone fears, terrorism emanating from Afghanistan. Indeed, the overlap between Trump’s and Biden’s views on Afghanistan are evidence of the absence of any Trump national-security philosophy. Without facing electoral discipline. Trump’s views on the Middle East generally, and on Israel and Afghanistan in particular, are likely to mirror those who advocate a pivot to Asia. This is a fool’s errand. When America steps back, the China-Russia axis is moving to fill any void we leave, as most Republicans still recognize.³⁹

Even in the Western Hemisphere, Trump did not carry through on reversing Obama Administration policies on Cuba and Venezuela, where his first-term feelings obviously rested more on Florida politics than geostrategy. There is little likelihood even his limited prior efforts would continue in a second term. If anything, Trump’s affinity for strong men means it won’t be long before he makes deals with Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and whatever apparatchik is running Cuba.

Given the isolationism permeating Trump’s idiosyncratic, disconnected thinking about national security, there is every reason to doubt his support for the defense build-up we urgently need to counter worldwide foreign threats. Notwithstanding Trump’s indifference to deficits or his occasional praise of the military, he will likely prove just as hypocritical on military matters as on everything else. Trump initially believed he could cut defense levels simply because his self-proclaimed skills as a negotiator could reduce procurement costs, as he first boasted regarding the F-35 and Air Force One’s replacements.⁴⁰

Trump repeatedly intervened on minor issues such as the aesthetics and placement of the command superstructures on aircraft carriers.⁴¹

But his attention was soon diverted, as it easily is. Even as he increased defense budgets, he showed acute discomfort, largely under the influence of isolationists in Congress. He once tweeted that his own military budget was crazy, saying that he, Putin, and Xi should confer to prevent a new arms race. ⁴²

In private, Trump was confounded at the idea that anyone would join the military and put themselves in danger. His comments became increasingly disparaging, not just about the generals he initially placed in top administration positions but came to distrust, but also about servicemembers generally. John Kelly, his second White House chief-of-staff, confirmed these comments, which simply prompted renewed Trumpian abuse.⁴³

In truth, Trump’s purported affinity for the military is purely transactional, a pose he strikes when he wants, and which he will unhesitatingly abandon.⁴⁴

Trump is no friend of the military.

Conclusion

At this writing, Trump is well positioned for reelection. For more than a year, this prospect has prompted pessimism and even despair among Reaganite conservatives. Political forensics experts may well conclude that their inactivity—standing on the sidelines,—returned Trump to power. The facts, however, are clear that he is unfit to be President. If his first four years were bad, a second four will be worse, dismaying many ardent supporters. I hope what follows is a sufficient warning to America’s voters to help avoid our worst fears from coming true.

CHAPTER 1

THE LONG MARCH TO A WEST WING CORNER OFFICE

One attraction of being National Security Advisor is the sheer multiplicity and volume of challenges that confront you. If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk—all while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and the sheer amount of work, and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description—try something else. It is exhilarating, but it is nearly impossible to explain to outsiders how the pieces fit together, which they often don’t in any coherent way.

I cannot offer a comprehensive theory of the Trump Administration’s transformation because none is possible. Washington’s conventional wisdom on Trump’s trajectory, however, is wrong. This received truth, attractive to the intellectually lazy, is that Trump was always bizarre, but in his first fifteen months, uncertain in his new place, and held in check by an axis of adults, he hesitated to act. As time passed, however, Trump became more certain of himself, the axis of adults departed, things fell apart, and Trump was surrounded only by yes men.

Pieces of this hypothesis are true, but the overall picture is simplistic. The axis of adults in many respects caused enduring problems not because they successfully managed Trump, as the High-Minded (an apt description I picked up from the French for those who see themselves as our moral betters) have it, but because they did precisely the opposite. They didn’t do nearly enough to establish order, and what they did do was so transparently self-serving and so publicly dismissive of many of Trump’s very clear goals (whether worthy or unworthy) that they fed Trump’s already-suspicious mind-set, making it harder for those who came later to have legitimate policy exchanges with the President. I had long felt that the role of the National Security Advisor was to ensure that a President understood what options were open to him for any given decision he needed to make, and then to ensure that this decision was carried out by the pertinent bureaucracies. The National Security Council process was certain to be different for different Presidents, but these were the critical objectives the process should achieve.

Because, however, the axis of adults had served Trump so poorly, he second-guessed people’s motives, saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government. The axis of adults is not entirely responsible for this mind-set. Trump is Trump. I came to understand that he believed he could run the Executive Branch and establish national-security policies on instinct, relying on personal relationships with foreign leaders, and with made-for-television showmanship always top of mind. Now, instinct, personal relations, and showmanship are elements of any President’s repertoire. But they are not all of it, by a long stretch. Analysis, planning, intellectual discipline and rigor, evaluation of results, course corrections, and the like are the blocking and tackling of presidential decision-making, the unglamorous side of the job. Appearance takes you only so far.

In institutional terms, therefore, it is undeniable that Trump’s transition and opening year-plus were botched irretrievably. Processes that should have immediately become second nature, especially for the many Trump advisors with no prior service even in junior Executive Branch positions, never happened. Trump and most of his team never read the government’s operators’ manual, perhaps not realizing doing so wouldn’t automatically make them members of the deep state. I entered the existing chaos, seeing problems that could have been resolved in the Administration’s first hundred days, if not before. Constant personnel turnover obviously didn’t help, nor did the White House’s Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all). It may be a bit much to say that Hobbes’s description of human existence as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short accurately described life in the White House, but by the end of their tenures, many key advisors would have leaned toward it. As I explained in my book Surrender Is Not an Option,¹

my approach to accomplishing things in government has always been to absorb as much as possible about the bureaucracies where I served (State, Justice, the United States Agency for International Development) so I could more readily accomplish my objectives.

My goal was not to get a membership card but to get a driver’s license. That thinking was not common at the Trump White House. In early visits to the West Wing, the differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning. What happened on one day on a particular issue often had little resemblance to what happened the next day, or the day after. Few seemed to realize it, care about it, or have any interest in fixing it. And it wasn’t going to get much better, which depressing but inescapable conclusion I reached only after I had joined the Administration.

Former Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt, a mentor of mine, liked to say, In politics, there are no immaculate conceptions. This insight powerfully explains appointments to very senior Executive Branch positions. Despite the frequency of press lines like I was very surprised when President Smith called me…, such expressions of innocence are invariably only casually related to the truth. And at no point is the competition for high-level jobs more intense than during the presidential transition, a US invention that has become increasingly elaborate in recent decades. Transition teams provide good case studies for graduate business schools on how not to do business. They exist for a fixed, fleeting period (from the election to the inauguration) and then disappear forever. They are overwhelmed by hurricanes of incoming information (and disinformation); complex, often competing, strategy and policy analyses; many consequential personnel decisions for the real government; and media and interest-group scrutiny and pressure.

Undeniably, some transitions are better than others. How they unfold reveals much about the Administration to come. Richard Nixon’s 1968–69 transition was the first example of contemporary transitions, with careful analyses of each major Executive Branch agency; Ronald Reagan’s in 1980–81 was a landmark in hewing to the maxim Personnel is policy, intently focused on picking people who would adhere to Reagan’s platform; and Donald Trump’s 2016–17 transition was… Donald Trump’s.

I spent election night, November 8–9, in Fox News’s Manhattan studios, waiting to comment on air about the next President’s foreign-policy priorities, which everyone expected would occur in the ten p.m. hour, just after Hillary Clinton was declared the winner. I finally went on the air around three o’clock the next morning. So much for advance planning, not only at Fox, but also in the camp of the President-Elect. Few observers believed Trump would win, and, as with Robert Dole’s failed 1996 campaign against Bill Clinton, Trump’s pre-election preparations were modest, reflecting the impending doom. In comparison with Hillary’s operation, which resembled a large army on a certain march toward power, Trump’s seemed staffed by a few hardy souls with time on their hands. His unexpected victory, therefore, caught his campaign unready, resulting in immediate turf fights with the transition volunteers and the scrapping of almost all its pre-election product. Starting over on November 9 was hardly auspicious, especially with the bulk of the transition staff in Washington, and Trump and his closest aides at Trump Tower in Manhattan. Trump didn’t understand much of what the huge federal behemoth did before he won, and he didn’t acquire much, if any, greater awareness during the transition, which did not bode well for his performance in office.

I played an insignificant part in Trump’s campaign except for one meeting with the candidate on Friday morning, September 23, at Trump Tower, three days before his first debate with Clinton. Hillary and Bill were a year ahead of me at Yale Law School, so, in addition to discussing national security, I offered Trump my thoughts on how Hillary would perform: well prepared and scripted, following her game plan no matter what. She hadn’t changed in over forty years. Trump did most of the talking, as in our first meeting in 2014, before his candidacy. As we concluded, he said, You know, your views and mine are actually very close. Very close.

At that point, I was widely engaged: Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; Fox News contributor; a regular on the speaking circuit; of counsel at a major law firm; member of corporate boards; senior advisor to a global private-equity firm; and author of opinion articles at the rate of about one a week. In late 2013, I formed a PAC and a SuperPAC to aid House and Senate candidates who believed in a strong US national-security policy, distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars directly to candidates and spending millions in independent expenditures in the 2014 and 2016 campaigns, and preparing to do so again in 2018. I had plenty to do. But I had also served in the last three Republican Administrations,²

and international relations had fascinated me since my days at Yale College. I was ready to go in again.

New threats and opportunities were coming at us rapidly, and eight years of Barack Obama meant there was much to repair. I had thought long and hard about America’s national security in a tempestuous world: Russia and China at the strategic level; Iran, North Korea, and other rogue nuclear-weapons aspirants; the swirling threats of radical Islamicist terrorism in the tumultuous Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen), Afghanistan and beyond; and the threats in our own hemisphere, like Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. While foreign-policy labels are unhelpful except to the intellectually lazy, if pressed, I liked to say my policy was pro-American. I followed Adam Smith on economics, Edmund Burke on society, The Federalist Papers on government, and a merger of Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles on national security. My first political campaigning was in 1964 on behalf of Barry Goldwater.

I knew senior Trump campaign officials like Steve Bannon, Dave Bossie, and Kellyanne Conway from prior associations, and had spoken to them about joining a Trump Administration should one happen. Once the transition began, I thought it reasonable to offer my services as Secretary of State, as did others. When Chris Wallace came off the Fox set early on November 9, after the race was called, he shook my hand and said, smiling broadly, Congratulations, Mr. Secretary. Of course, there was no dearth of contenders to lead the State Department, which generated endless media speculation about who the front-runner was, starting with Newt Gingrich, proceeding to Rudy Giuliani, then Mitt Romney, and then back to Rudy. I had worked with and respected each of them, and each was credible in his own way. I paid special attention because there was constant chatter (not to mention pressure) that I should settle for being Deputy Secretary, obviously not my preference. What came next demonstrated Trumpian decision-making and provided (or should have) a cautionary lesson.

While all the early leading contenders were broadly conservative philosophically, they brought different backgrounds, different perspectives, different styles, different pluses and minuses to the table. Among these possibilities (and others like Tennessee Senator Bob Corker and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman), were there common, consistent attributes and accomplishments Trump sought? Obviously not, and observers should have asked: What is the real principle governing Trump’s personnel-selection process? Why not have Giuliani as Attorney General, a job he was made for? Romney as White House Chief of Staff, bringing his undeniable strategic planning and management skills? And Gingrich, with decades of creative theorizing, as White House domestic policy czar?

Was Trump looking only for people from central casting? Much was made of his purported dislike of my moustache. For what it’s worth, he told me it was never a factor, noting that his father also had one. Other than shrinks and those deeply interested in Sigmund Freud, which I assuredly am not, I don’t really believe my looks played a role in Trump’s thinking. And if they did, God help the country. Attractive women, however, fall into a different category when it comes to Trump. Loyalty was the key factor, which Giuliani had proved beyond peradventure in the days after the Access Hollywood tape became public in early October. Lyndon Johnson once reportedly said of an aide, I want real loyalty. I want him to kiss my ass in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses. Who knew Trump read so much history? Giuliani was later extremely gracious to me, saying after he withdrew from the Secretary of State melee, John would probably be my choice. I think John is terrific.³

The President-Elect called me on November 17, and I congratulated him on his victory. He recounted his recent calls with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and looked ahead to meeting that afternoon with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. We’ll have you up here in the next couple of days, Trump promised, and we are looking at you for a number of situations. Some of the new President’s first personnel announcements came the next day, with Jeff Sessions picked as Attorney General (eliminating that option for Giuliani); Mike Flynn as National Security Advisor (appropriately rewarding Flynn’s relentless campaign service); and Mike Pompeo as CIA Director. (A few weeks after Flynn’s announcement, Henry Kissinger told me, He’ll be gone within a year. Although he couldn’t have known what was about to happen, Kissinger knew Flynn was in the wrong job.) As the days passed, more Cabinet and senior White House positions emerged publicly, including, on November 23, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley as Ambassador to the UN, with Cabinet rank, a bizarre step to take with the Secretary of State still unchosen. Haley had no qualifications for the job, but it was ideal for someone with presidential ambitions to check the foreign policy box on her campaign résumé. Cabinet rank or no, the UN Ambassador was part of State, and coherent US foreign policy can have only one Secretary of State. Yet here was Trump, picking subordinate positions in State’s universe with no Secretary in sight. By definition, there was trouble ahead, especially when I heard from a Haley staff person that Trump had considered her to be Secretary. Haley, her staffer said, declined the offer because of lack of experience, which she obviously hoped to acquire as UN Ambassador.⁴

Jared Kushner, whom Paul Manafort had introduced me to during the campaign, called me over Thanksgiving. He assured me I was still very much in the mix for Secretary of State, and in a whole bunch of different contexts. Donald is a big fan of yours, as we all are. Meanwhile, the New York Post reported on decision-making at Mar-a-Lago at Thanksgiving, quoting one source, Donald was walking around asking everybody he could about who should be his secretary of state. There was a lot of criticism of Romney, and a lot of people like Rudy. There are also many people advocating for John Bolton.⁵

I knew I should have worked the Mar-a-Lago primary harder! Certainly, I was grateful for the considerable support I had among pro-Israel Americans (Jews and evangelicals alike), Second Amendment supporters, Cuban-Americans, Venezuelan-Americans, Taiwanese-Americans, and conservatives generally. Many people called Trump and his advisors on my behalf, part of the venerable transition lobbying process.

The transition’s spreading disorder increasingly reflected not just organizational failures but Trump’s essential decision-making style. Charles Krauthammer, a sharp critic of his, told me he had been wrong earlier to characterize Trump’s behavior as that of an eleven-year-old boy. I was off by ten years, Krauthammer remarked. He’s like a one-year-old. Everything is seen through the prism of whether it benefits Donald Trump. That was certainly the way the personnel-selection process appeared from the outside. As one Republican strategist told me, the best way to become Secretary of State was to try to be the last man standing.